I see that the Sydney area got around 5 mm of rain overnight, with more on the Illawarra. At OH, the total is still slowly building at the rate of about 0.7 mm / hour, even though there's not much in the radar. That helps as the wind was raising dust yesterday.

On the Harbour Webcam, Sydney looks like Birmingham by the Pacific. I think we have a dank marine layer inserted beneath a solid NW cloud band, neither of which look like shifting any time soon.

Anyway, I've flushed the hot air out of the unit, the sun can come back now.

Min in Canberra will be 21.6c so no record there, but still their equal warmest December night not counting the 9am reset.

21.6C at 9am the morning before shouldn't count...

I went looking for possible higher overnight mins in Canberra, and found two other December nights in the 1940s when the lowest temperature between 6pm and 9am was between 24 and 25; with observations (at best) only every three hours, there's a pretty good chance that it dropped below 24 at some point during those nights but we don't know that for sure.

It was interesting ozthunder that you noticed recently a burden of the long drive seeping in - by the way youre chases/videos are excellent - is it old age or just having driven those same roads so many times and knowing what to expect . also much less user friendly road networks than the states obviously. i attend many country race meets through the year and have always loved the country drive there and back ie mudgee or wellington return trip on a sunday but just recently the drives too are becoming a burden. i would love a storm chase/race meeting helicopter - that is the dream im working towards! ps lots of blue/aqua radar returns overhead but just the odd spittle and 0.2mm so far

Hate to admit it, but age is a factor, not the only one. I will be 60 in February.

The Hunter chases are particularly annoying (may be doing one this Saturday). The stretch through Sydney is really bad, especially Pennant hills Road where I have struck 3 truck breakdowns. Then the stretch from Ourimbah to the new Hunter Expressway has to be the most boring 40-50kms of road ever paved down. Lined entirely with trees and no views.

Thx guys, light mizzle/occasional drizzle, just what a present I always wanted!, The M7/M2 to F1 freeway tunnel is going to make a big difference to the mental thought of getting up north, theyre working on it hammer and tongs, even sundays/public holidays

As a fellow southern redneck, I share your pain ozthunder. It takes over an hour to get from here to the Wahroonga on ramp even on a good day. The F3 extension won't benefit me much either. That's why I prefer to go south or west for my drives and local holidays.

The temperature is still struggling around 17C here which is impressive in the times we live in. The nice misty rain has ceased, though.

The temperature is still struggling around 17C here which is impressive in the times we live in. The nice misty rain has ceased, though.

I haven't cracked 18 deg's here either. Had mostly light rain/drizzle here most of the AM, and then a drier spell from midday till about a half an hour ago, when the drizzle returned.Looking at the sat pics, it looks like we might get some more persistent rain this afternoon/tonight, when the remnants of those western NSW storms pass over.

It's likely the record was broken after OH reached 45.3 on 14/1/1939. Unfortunately, data for 15/1/1939 is missing from the electronic record.

I recall looking at the Sydney Morning Herald copies for that week in the Sydney Uni Library Stacks many years ago (that was way before this newfangled internet thingy). As I recall, the weather report showed the max for the day after the record heat as in the high 60's fahrenhiet. In fact, max temps for the 16th to 19th were 19.3, 19.5, 21.1 and 22.8. Sydney seems to have been more Melbourne-like back then. I can recall similar periods when I was young - 'century' heat followed by an extended cool, wet spell.

Assuming that the maximum on the 15th was about 20, that would have been a drop of 25 degrees C, or 45 (fahrenheit) as they would have said back then.

Yes, probably and I was a bit annoyed when I noticed that. And Obs Hill was the only station around at that time so I couldn't check stats for a nearby station!! Sydney Ap started running in March 1939 and Richmond RAAF not long after that.

Edited by Wave Rider (15/12/201616:20)

_________________________
The longer you wait for storms, the more you appreciate them.